Restaurant kitchen cleanliness doesn’t stop at the extractor hood

Health and safety legislation means that hotels and restaurants need to keep their extractor systems clean from both a food hygiene and fire risk perspective. That means a regular deep clean of the fatty and smoky deposits which build up in all extractor duct work, no matter how good the filtering. In many cases the extractor ducts are inaccessible to workers, and if they are, cleaning is not a pleasant prospect for the evening shift, who will have spent the last hour of their long day sanitising their prep areas, ovens, floors and other kitchen areas. Here are some preventative measures that your restaurant can take to maintain your extractors all year round and avoid any long term issues at peak seasonal periods.

Have a clean and safe Christmas kitchen

With kitchens running overtime in the busy festive period, getting the work done in advance could prevent a kitchen or building fire, or a damning visit from the hygiene or fire inspectors at a critical point in your businesses’ year. Having the extraction system down as a regular maintenance item could also save on costly replacement work and will also reduce the risk of any health and safety incidents. With restaurant bookings full of Christmas parties, large family dinners and high ticket business meals, the cost of lost trade through an unexpected closure could be huge.

For a kitchen running 12 hours a day or longer, a quarterly cleaning schedule is recommended by Section 7 of the TR19 regulations, while those with less use require only six-monthly, or an annual clean if used for less than six hours a day. In the current financial climate, some businesses in the hospitality sector may be struggling, therefore, risking the entire business on not having a deep clean of the cooker ventilation systems is a false economy that can have serious repercussions for the owners, workers and even guests.

Fire is a business’ greatest threat

A kitchen fire can devastate a building (Fires from kitchen extracts) and the business or hotel attached to it. While some may think that out of sight is out of mind, there is no legal excuse for not having the extractor system properly maintained, as a growing list of property or business managers have found out in court.

Some 6,000 commercial fires per year start in the extraction system, with a regular litany of stories in the press (metro.co.uk – hotel destroyed by fire after years of build up of fat and grease) highlighting the dangers of not cleaning an extractor system properly. Grease and dust provide a highly flammable combination that are guaranteed to ignite at some point, be it months or years from now, if not regularly cleaned.

Keep your duct work up to standard

There is a lot to consider and worry about when running a restaurant. Instead of adding the cleanliness of your extractor fans to that long list, why not hire a professional instead, allowing you to concentrate on what you do best!

Ductbusters can take on this work for you (Kitchen extract cleaning), saving your kitchen teams time and effort. Our expert service with the appropriate cleaning agents, tools and technology provides cleansing to TR19 standards, with a certificate on completion of the work, required by inspectors and increasingly by insurers. We can also inspect your duct work to ensure it is up to modern standards. Extractor systems are legally required to have doors for access, which many older types do not provide. We provide a free of charge survey to ensure your duct work meets current legislation. Ductbusters work across the UK on all commercial systems, from individual fast food outlets to hospitals and other large-scale operations. If you do not have a regular cleaning schedule for your kitchen duct work, there is no better time to arrange a clean before the intensity of the festive season pushes it out of mind for another year.